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Set: Related very distantly to 'Masquerade' and is set several years into a hypothetical future.
--
AGING
-
Hair like silk, long and quiet, tumbling all 'round his large, dark hands, framing the opaque European face upon the pillow; the light of what thin moon shines through the window, between curtains pulled halfway into proper closing place, and lights her pale skin like wan pearls clasped in his hands. Thin and fragile, but the sketching blue lines of pulsing veins are lit along the inside of her wrist, and a thin wrinkle forming in the middle of her brow is substance of her strength.
He is still in shadow, the edge of the moon caught in the curtains and kept from him; he is comfortable with that, prefers the shadows for the moment as he keeps her from moving, looks with some troubled fascination at the tiny lines of approaching middle-age along her face and traces one with his thumb.
"You're old, Jeanne," Hao says curiously, and he knows he will come anew from the grave, one day again, and that she will not.
"As are you," she whispers back, sharply, tracing her own lines on his sly, deceptively kind face. "Don't you dare pity me."
And she will be gone, then, one day in the half-glimpsed future only she is certain of; he will miss the warmth, perhaps - but he does not know if he will miss her. The company, the other god-figure who had not proven victor, the only one that seemed to understand him truly, deeply, utterly.
He will miss the possibility of some shadowy permanence, but sends it from him, to lower his mouth to hers, warmth to warmth, loss to loss, lines to lines.
Set: Related very distantly to 'Masquerade' and is set several years into a hypothetical future.
--
AGING
-
Hair like silk, long and quiet, tumbling all 'round his large, dark hands, framing the opaque European face upon the pillow; the light of what thin moon shines through the window, between curtains pulled halfway into proper closing place, and lights her pale skin like wan pearls clasped in his hands. Thin and fragile, but the sketching blue lines of pulsing veins are lit along the inside of her wrist, and a thin wrinkle forming in the middle of her brow is substance of her strength.
He is still in shadow, the edge of the moon caught in the curtains and kept from him; he is comfortable with that, prefers the shadows for the moment as he keeps her from moving, looks with some troubled fascination at the tiny lines of approaching middle-age along her face and traces one with his thumb.
"You're old, Jeanne," Hao says curiously, and he knows he will come anew from the grave, one day again, and that she will not.
"As are you," she whispers back, sharply, tracing her own lines on his sly, deceptively kind face. "Don't you dare pity me."
And she will be gone, then, one day in the half-glimpsed future only she is certain of; he will miss the warmth, perhaps - but he does not know if he will miss her. The company, the other god-figure who had not proven victor, the only one that seemed to understand him truly, deeply, utterly.
He will miss the possibility of some shadowy permanence, but sends it from him, to lower his mouth to hers, warmth to warmth, loss to loss, lines to lines.